Season2024/25 Part 5
Sure, the place was improvised. A makeshift shelter. A mishmash of tables and chairs collected from all over town. But it had its own charm. Bamboo mats offered just enough protection from the wind to pretend they were walls. Slacklines cut straight through the dining area. Guests were eating dinner while others practiced jiu-jitsu beside them. Acro yoga happened somewhere between the tables, and the faint sound of our little JBL speaker was usually enough to get somebody dancing.
It was a different story for the staff and volunteers. We had squeezed reception, self-service, the bar, and the entire kitchen into the 25 square meters of the old workout area. Nobody could really tell where the self-service ended and the kitchen began. In the beginning, it worked. December started slower than in previous years. After everything that had happened, I was worried about how many guests would actually show up for the rest of the season. For the first time, the entire volunteer team was together, and I couldn't have asked for a better one. Somehow they filled every gap before anyone even asked. Between climbing courses they served food, washed dishes, explained delays, entertained guests, solved problems, and generally did far more than anyone had signed up for. Without them, the whole experiment would probably have collapsed sometime around the second dinner service. Despite all the hard work and endless little disasters, they somehow managed to always make me smile.
Then the camp filled up much faster than expected, and our tiny kitchen met reality. Usually we had around fourteen staff members, but there are only so many cooks you can fit into a kitchen the size of a generous bathroom before they start cooking each other. Dinner orders piled up. Waiting over an hour became normal. Officially the kitchen closed at ten. In practice, the staff often kept cooking until close to midnight, and this was before Crux Season had even arrived. Crux Season is what we call the time between Christmas and New Year, traditionally the busiest days of the entire season.
People can become remarkably unhappy when they're hungry, especially after spending the whole day climbing. Under different circumstances I could easily imagine customers storming the kitchen. Instead, our guests watched the chaos unfold, ordered another beer, started another conversation, and waited. Everyone could see that nobody was standing around doing nothing, and I am deeply grateful for the patience and understanding they showed us. Christmas slowly approached, but the camp certainly didn't look like it. I wasn't really in the mood to put up decorations. The volunteer team disagreed and simply took matters into their own hands.
On Christmas Day we held our traditional crate stacking competition at the Roof Crag, followed by Christmas dinner, a bonfire, and night climbing. As punishment for my rather Grinch-like attitude during the previous days, I was forced to wear a pair of plush pink bunny ears. Somehow, for a few hours, it felt like the good old days. Like all the things I had been used to in previous seasons had quietly returned.
A few days later came New Year's Eve. Traditionally Camp 2 hosts the party, while Camp 1 stays quiet for those who prefer celebrating by going to bed shortly after midnight. Over the previous weeks we'd all grown a little tired of our small JBL speaker. Every few songs it demanded another charging break, which isn't exactly ideal for a New Year's party. So we bought two large new speakers. We'd need them for the coming seasons anyway, and somehow it felt like another small step towards rebuilding a proper restaurant. Problem solved. The sound was amazing.
New Year's at Green Climbers follows a familiar pattern. Someone asks for techno. Someone else wants pop. A third person insists on Latin music. You change the playlist, and the people who had just been dancing immediately ask you to change it back. Besides the usual DJ diplomacy, the atmosphere was great. Until, about twenty minutes before midnight, both speakers died. Well... not completely. They still worked, technically, but they had added a creaky screech, like dragging chalk across a blackboard. For sure the JBL wasn't charged.
For the first time all evening, everybody agreed on one thing. Silence was worse. Eventually a couple of small speakers appeared from somewhere. Music returned, people laughed, the countdown happened on time, glasses were raised, and the new year arrived exactly as scheduled despite the complete lack of cooperation from our sound system. Later the party moved up to the Roof Crag. I sat down with a few others, finally starting to relax. I was looking forward to a better year and, if I was honest, even more to finally going to bed. Someone looked around the camp and said, "Well, after all, it turned out to be a great party. A good way to end the year." The thought that crossed my mind was, Don't count your chickens before they hatch. The Lao have a much more direct version of the same idea: Don't count the bodies before the battle is over.
A few moments later, Max walked over.
"We have a problem."
At that moment, I knew the battle wasn't over yet.
A family with two children had just arrived. They had booked from the 1st of January onward and had asked the day before whether it would be possible to check in at one o'clock. We had happily replied, "Sure!" Unfortunately, we had assumed they meant one in the afternoon. They had meant one in the morning. The camp was completely full, and it was almost two o'clock by then. Finding accommodation in town at that hour seemed impossible. So we found two tents. Max immediately offered to set them up, once again proving that everyone was doing far more than they had signed up for. To my surprise, the family took the whole situation with remarkable good humour. Adventure time. When they checked out much later, they told us they had had an amazing stay. Sometimes the best customer experience starts with not having a room.
At the time, it felt like we had already overcome more than enough for one season. We were wrong. Compared with what lay ahead, these were still tiny problems.
